TECHNOLOGY - Officials at Sweden’s Ice Hotel have announced a partnership with Virgin Galactic (owned by Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Airlines and Virgin Mobile) which will allow it to sell tickets into space to space tourists.
The trips, which are expected to take in the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights), are scheduled to depart from the new spaceport in Koruna, northern Sweden, in 2012 and will allow passengers the chance to fly through either the northern lights during the winter, or the endless sun of the Arctic summer.
Virgin began the search for accredited space agents this January and the Ice Hotel will be ready to start taking Virgin Galactic inquiries and bookings as soon as specific training is completed.
Sir Richard Branson’s space venture has yet to fly a commercial flight, Virgin Galactic are already expanding their routes due to high demand. Virgin Galactic has already made £20 million in bookings and passengers (over 200 of them) are requesting new routes.
Virgin Galactic has another spaceport in New Mexico, where they are testing and designing the first spacecraft designed to make regular sub-orbital flights into space.
The 200+ would-be astronauts have paid deposits of £100,000 for the two-and-a-half hour long flights, and include celebrities Paris Hilton, Moby, Sigourney Weaver and scientist Stephen Hawking.
New Mexico flights are set to begin in 2011 and Swedish flights to begin in 2012.
Tourist space flights are currently also offered by Space Adventures, which has thus far sent former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi and South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth, into space for millions of dollars.
Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) space launch vehicle was christened "Eve" (after Sir Richard Branson's mother), will lift the space-going rocket (known as SpaceShipTwo) to 50,000 feet, at which point the rocket will launch, and later return to earth like a space shuttle does.
So what will be the christened name of SpaceShipTwo? Adam seems like a good choice.
See Also:
Branson offers a $25 million prize for reducing global warming
Xcor Spaceship Unveiled
American, Canadian, Toronto & International News Commentary: Spreading Freedom in the Face of Tyranny
March 28, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Affordable Website Design & SEO
|
Featured Posts
The Sarcasm Symbol
Ever had some confusion online or with your cellphone when someone fails to catch the sarcasm? Well now with the SarcMark you can ge... |
|
Behold, the Scorpion Hydrogen Supercar
CARS - To the right is the future of supercars... it is a hydrogen supercar called the Scorpion. The Scorpion from Ronn Motors in Texas is t... |
|
Documents show Stephen Harper misusing public funds
CANADA - According to 950+ pages of documents obtained by the Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act the Privy Coun... |
|
Pink's Rosie the Riveter
ENTERTAINMENT - What I like about this video is how it meshes different social movements like feminism, veganism, anti-capitalism... |
|
California's Dustbowl
ENVIRONMENT - The photo on the right is a farm in California that has been put up for sale. Its just one of thousands of farms that are n... |
|
Is Steampunk the New Goth???
GOTHIC - Watch out what you see on the subway late at night because while in 2001 you might have seen some pretty freakish goths, by 20... |
|
Do you have enough Ice Water in your diet?
HEALTH - A Calorie (large C) is a measurement of the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a litre of water (1 kg's worth) ... |
|
North Korean timeline towards Inevitable War
POLITICS - The following is timeline of events that have occurred on the Korean Peninsula. 1945 - Japan surrenders to the United States a... |
|
Judgment Day is Tomorrow, so sayeth Cult
RELIGION - According to a cult based in California, Judgement Day is tomorrow (May 21st 2011) and Jesus Christ will return to the Earth a... |
|
Sex in Space Forbidden
SEX/TECHNOLOGY - Sex in outer space is a big no-no according to NASA. Not for professional astronauts at least, but the growing numb... |
Popular Posts / Last 30 Days
-
Visit amazon.com/author/moffat to get free short stories and huge discounts on fantasy books by Charles Moffat. Sale ends on October 20th.
-
CANADA - One of Canada's elite commando units, the JTF2 commandos, have returned home to Canada after serving in Afghanistan for almos...
-
I just finished watching Sicko (the 2007 documentary by Michael Moore about American health care, or lack thereof) and it is way better tha...
-
Interracial Relationships is a big no-no for some people, however there's a lot of information out there showing that such relationship...
-
CANADA / ENVIRONMENT - Companies in Canada are cutting their emissions even though the government of Canada is still sitting on the fence w...
-
CANADA - Seriously... who was going to vote for a bald guy named Rocco Rossi??? According to polls 4% of Torontonians were thinking of voti...
-
CARS - Nobody ever steals a pink car. According to a Dutch study which compared the colour of cars being stolen, pink is the safest colour ...
-
And the similarities don't stop there. Hitler and Trump have a lot more in common. The context in which Adolf Hitler was elected is...
-
CANADA - Interesting Fact: Stephen Harper 's Conservative government in Canada has only shown up to work for 14 days between June 1st ...
-
CANADA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is about to pull the plug on the 39th Parliament and plunge the country into an election because, a...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments containing links will be marked as spam and not approved. We moderate every comment. If you want to advertise on this blog it is $30 per link.